Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida Page A

despised him as much as I’d ever despised anyone.

    Outside, he turned to lock the door of the church, and I ran in the direction we had come from. I heard him yelling behind me, but I kept running, through town and over the bridge. My backpack thumped against me like a drum.
    I was on the other side of the lake when I saw the lights of his car behind me. I ducked into the woods. As I wove between the trees, snow cracked beneath my boots, the sound of light-bulbs burning out. The car slowed and idled, and I stood behind a tree, leaning into it. My eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, and I saw the small eyes of the trees looking back at me.
    “Clarissa,” Eero’s voice called out. I continued running until I came across a structure. A hut? A teepee? A sign was posted at waist height. TRADITIONAL SAMI LAVU , it read. I looked up and around me, and in the distance saw a large building: the Sami museum. The hut was part of an exhibition.
    “Clarissa.” Eero’s voice echoed. I turned but couldn’t see him. Behind me, my footprints appeared as small, dark holes in the snow. I opened the door to the Sami lavu , stepped inside, and closed the door.
    I inhaled the bosky scent of the bark poles and stood listening for Eero’s voice, for the sound of his footsteps. In the distance, a car door slammed. I saw a shadow in the corner of the lavu , and took a step back. I pulled the flashlight from my backpack, switched on the beam. It was only another museum sign propped up on a stand. I forced myself to concentrate on reading the words. I needed to anchor my thoughts.

    “The Sami lavu is the equivalent of the Native American teepee,” the sign explained. “The family would sleep in the same lavu during reindeer-herding season.” A map illustrated who slept where in the lavu . The parents slept on one side of the tent, by the kitchen area, and next to them, the smaller children. The hearth was in the center. Past the hearth slept the older children, and beyond them, the servants, who slept by the door.
    Now that I was still, I grew cold. Stray strands of hair near my face, wetted by tears, were now frozen. They felt like straw against my cheeks and chin. I crossed my arms and slid my hands under my armpits, the way my mother had taught me. “The warmest part of your body,” she’d said.
    She had given me so many instructions, instructions that had seemed unprovoked, but now I understood. If a man tries something on you, force yourself to pee. Use your legs. That’s where your weight is. Gouge his eyes with your fingers. Punch his ears with your fists. Ruin his ability to see and hear. And then run.

    Perfume Girl � ‌

1.
    The summer I was nineteen, I volunteered to work on an archaeological dig in Montana. I read about the project in a paleontology magazine Dad subscribed to. A T. rex had been found in the vicinity the year before, and archaeologists were searching for fossils so they could determine when it had lived. I signed up to help, because I liked the photos that accompanied the article. A woman stood in front of a cliff, wielding a pitchfork; a man, arms extended, displayed an unscrolled time line.
    The dig had been organized by a paleontologist who had a following among grad students: men with bad posture and delicate fingers, women with pear-shaped bodies and braids. Nonarchaeologists like me included landscapers who wanted to apply their digging skills to science, and middle-aged women who had opted out of their usual Club Med vacations. When I arrived in Montana, I felt adventurous, precocious. I was the youngest volunteer by five or six years.
    By that evening, I felt ridiculous, alone. No one had much interest in talking to me. Everyone else teamed up for tents; I was granted my own. It was slick, mildewy, set apart from the others on the side of a dusty hill. At night, I could hear the call of wolves in the distance, and, nearby, the hissing of snakes.

    Days at the site were long, the sun high